Gold Spot Price Open: $1,232
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,259
Change in Gold Spot Price: +$27
Silver Spot Price Open: $15.38
Silver Spot Price Close: $16.02
Change in Silver Spot Price: +$0.64
Precious metals made nice gains on Thursday as investors had time to digest what exactly the Fed said in the wake of their meeting yesterday. When all was said and done, gold managed to gain about 27 dollars while silver picked up well over 50 cents. Platinum and palladium also bounced back, but neither metal added much more than ten dollars. In fact, after surging to begin the day, platinum backed down by the time markets closed and only ended up up $5.
Metals Gain in Wake of FOMC Meeting
Though the FOMC meeting wrapped up yesterday, investors did not really get a chance to react to what was said until today. Seeing as we are now expecting far fewer interest rate hikes than originally anticipated, the average investor’s outlook on the US economy has shifted a bit. With that being said, the Fed did make it clear that the US economy is performing well even though most other areas of the world cannot say the same.
Now, investors are anticipating a maximum of 2 additional rate hikes during 2016. According to the Fed, even though conditions at home may permit further rate hikes, the status of the global economy among many other factors are things that are keeping the Fed from making too many moves too quickly.
All of this has helped gold and silver gain considerable value today as the USD sold off to a 5-month low. Crude oil is working to push back above $40/barrel, but I highly doubt that this will last seeing as many people are having doubts about the possibility of the upcoming OPEC meeting yielding anything close to resembling a production freeze. That meeting is going to kick off in 3 days, and investors will be paying extremely close attention to it.
Weekly Jobless Claims Falls Just Short of Expectations
After last week brought about a surprisingly upbeat report regarding weekly claims for unemployment benefits, this week saw those claims tick upward a bit. According to the US Department of Labor, 7,000 more people filed for first-time unemployment benefits from the week before. Though this is not necessarily the best news in the world, it was encouraging to see that the seasonally-adjusted average is right around where experts expected it to be.
As it stands, the seasonally-adjusted number of unemployment claims stands at 265,000. The originally forecast was that the seasonally-adjusted number of claims would come in at 268,000. The bright spot that overshadows all of today’s data is the fact the seasonally-adjusted number of claims has been below 300,000 for 54 consecutive weeks. The 300,000 mark is important because if the average number of claims is above 300,000, it signals that there are some major issues with the employment sector. The fact that claims have been under that mark for so long does well to convince investors and market experts that the employment sector is still performing quite well. We will continue to keep a close eye on the employment figures for the United States as they play out over the coming months.
Wrap-Up
Thursday was not the most eventful day from an economic data point of view, but instead we saw investors reacting to what the FOMC had to say in the wake of their meeting. As we look ahead to the final day of the week, it will be interesting to see if gold and silver can maintain the lofty gains that they made today. I imagine some profit-taking will play a role in Friday, but what that does to spot values remains to be seen.
